#+title: ipswich hypersigil


Egrebor Ipswich entered the dark chamber and quietly closed the door behind him.  The portal was rough, heavy and oak of course, the best wood available that would withstand both physical and magical impacts.  Ipswich placed one hand upon the door and with the other, slipped the key in the lock and turned.

Snip.  Locked.

As the key slipped into his pocket, Ipswich placed his opposite forefinger on the door, just above the key hole and began tracing a bindrune in the wood.  As his finger moved, the rune began to glow faintly blue, a soft and delicate shade that was nearly unseen in the greater darkness of the room.

Now, locked.

The room around the man was indeed full of darkness for little light entered from the single window in the far wall.  It was a moonless night - oh, the moon was there but hidden behind many layers of dark and roiling storm clouds that had gathered throughout the day and now refused to move on from over the city.  Turning from the door, Ipswich glanced quickly about him with keen eyes, as if the darkness did not hinder his sight at all.  This was partially true, for the things which he scanned for could not be seen with the mundane eye.

The lore whispered to him..."All the doorways, before one enters, should be looked around, should be spied out; it can’t be known for certain where enemies are sitting in the hall ahead."

A hall indeed, he thought.

Moving from the door, Ipswich reached out and grasping a small lever, drew it slowly downward toward the floor.  As the metal handle moved, a light sprang into existence and a sickly, off white radiance filled the room.  This light came from a contraption that stood taller than the man, a single bulb of glass hidden within a series of vertical lattices, made from animal hide, and scraped to varying thickness which reduced the radiance to a usable level. Brass and glass and the skins of animals.

Now that he could see in the normal spectrum, Ipswich ran his eyes over the small chamber.  All seemed to be as it should.  He found that his books were all present and ordered on their shelves, the many scrolls all piled securely in their pigeonholes where he had placed them.  The room - his study, was a small stone chamber of four equal sides, two of them covered in book shelves, a third by the door and the last by both a window, offset, and a tapestry.  This tapestry depicted a small mounted host in silver armor riding toward the south gate of the city, banners resplendent, citizens waving in welcome upon the battlements.  Behind the gate and below the joyous citizens, loomed the towers of sorcery, one of which he now stood in.  Below this tapestry sat his desk, that great oak monolith that had been assembled piece by piece within the room and would not be removed unless destroyed.  Ipswich looked closely at it, his eyes sweeping over the contents and trying to sense anything out of order.

No, nothing out of order.  His journals were laying correctly, the books of power neatly closed where he had placed them.  The desk was covered in both rolled and stacked papers.  There were notebooks, pens and ink, amulets and a few valuable trinkets.  A carved tine covered in small spidery runes lay sedately upon it, along with several stones (pink, white and turquoise), jars of aromatic herbs and a collection of smoking pipes.

When he had satisfied himself that all was correct, Ipswich moved back to the door for a final test.  Reaching out a hand, he removed a velvet cover that had been hanging next to the gateway, there on the wall.  Dropping it to the ground, he revealed a wall length mirror.

Gazing at it, Ipswich couldn't fail to note that the surface of the glass seemed to both drink in the light around it and give off a dark shadow at the same time.  The frame of the mirror was ornately carved, animal motifs coiling and carousing along its length, a length which stretched from just above the floor to an inch below the ceiling.  It was a magnificent piece and had cost him much to secure it.

Ipswich looked into the depths of this mirror and scanned the room that he saw within.  Had there been any object or entity set to ensnare or harm, the mirror would have shown their dark shadow to his probing eyes.  Yet there was nothing and all seemed correct.  Only a middle aged man stared back at him, a man middling in height, solid in build, his dark robes of velvet sweeping the floor.  Ipswich had moved on past his fiftieth year and now his shoulder length hair was turning as gray as his long, bushy beard.  It had been many years since he had trimmed either and in truth, the beard was more white now than gray.  As with most things, this appearance, however, was deceiving.  Ipswich was strong and his eyes darted with a natural cunning that caught many things that passed by other men.  Those who knew him closely understood this and knew that those gray whiskers were but a mask to hide something far from serene.